To endear themselves to humans, robots will need to be useful, and one android already proving its mettle is Moxi, who assists nurses by zipping through hospital hallways on supply room pick-ups and time-sensitive secure item transport.

Moxi was built by Austin-based Diligent Robotics, which was co-founded in 2017 by Dr. Vivian Chu and Dr. Andrea Thomaz. We spoke spoke to Dr. Chu, a Google[X] and IBM Research veteran, to find out more. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Let's talk about Moxi. First off, why the name? At Diligent Robotics we were looking for a name that isn't a human one, is short, easy to say, and gender-free.

What was your process for developing the robot's UX? Moxi is the third socially intelligent robot that my co-founder, Dr. Andrea Thomaz, and I have worked on together. We built the first two robots during our time in academia, and Moxi is the first commercial robot we've launched in market since founding Diligent Robotics. So we already had an idea of what worked and what didn't. We approached the UX from a design perspective—evaluating exactly who our target customer was, what their environment is like, and what their workload consisted of.

Did you bring in an industrial designer? Yes, we've worked with Carla Diana before and we determined that Moxi's key social intelligence components would include a curved body with soft edge features; blinking LED eyes; upbeat gender-neutral voice that "meeps" to communicate social cues; and a head that turns and nods to look in a direction before moving to communicate intentions.

Dr. Vivian Chu with Moxi (Photo Credit: Daniel Cavazos)

The robot is very dextrous. Yes. We determined that Moxi needed to have full mobile manipulation capabilities in order to complete tasks end-to-end without needing help from people. That required Moxi to have dexterity (flexible arm, gripper hand that can pick up objects of various sizes), a rising pillar body to reach high/low shelves, a fully mobile base, and to be close to human in dimensions in order to fit through hallways and doors.

Moxi has social intelligence too? In order to work in semi-structured environments around people, we know how crucial it is for Moxi to be both efficient and socially intelligent—making a real impact on people's workloads, while also making people feel super comfortable. In order to do this, we utilize physical components of Moxi such as LED eyes, a moving head, and audio sounds. We also build into our core software stack social awareness.

Explain how Moxi learns on the go. We use human-guided learning for this. Moxi observes and repeats tasks, learning within semi-structured environments, because every day brings a new challenge. For example, Moxi might be tasked with picking up a gauze pad and delivering it to room 306. But [it's] never learned how to pick up gauze, so [it] indicates the need to be taught this. Using human-guided exploration, Moxi records key information such as weight (haptic), color (visual), and sound (audio) of the object as it picks up the gauze pad, and now adds that data sequence to its "brain."

Why hospitals? Well, for a start, hospitals by their nature, are all ADA-compliant, so we knew a robot could navigate this environment, which has standards and protocols to make it feasible. We also wanted to build a robot that would really help people—and nursing staff are increasingly suffering from burnout. From the trials we've done so far, the number one feedback is that Moxi is a really useful member of the team, doing the grunt work that frees up nurses to spend more time with patients. There's an urgent need to provide efficiency and consistency of care into the medical system. The demand for nurses is increasing rapidly: in 2014 there were 2.7 million in the US, but it's projected we'll need at least 3.2 million by 2024.

Dr. Vivian Chu with Moxi (Photo Credit: Daniel Cavazos)

It's also a really tough job, with long hours and incredible stress. True. Bedside nurse turnover rate is 16.8 percent, with close to a quarter (23.8 percent) of new hires leaving within a year. Moxi can help with this situation. Nurses spend up to 30 percent of their time on non-value-added tasks. Staff want to spend more time with patients and so state-of-the-art robotics is a really useful addition to the field.

You're still in trials with Moxi, but how many units do you have out right now, working in hospitals? We just finished up our beta trials at four US hospitals and are currently evaluating the many learnings and new opportunities from the trials to inform our strategy for Moxi's rollout into market.

And what's your business model? With hospitals, we do long-term contracts as a managed service model, designing Moxi's capabilities, based on the workflow of the hospital, and constantly monitoring hospital needs to make sure hospitals only pay for what they use.

Can you give us a rundown of a typical day at the hospital for Moxi? Sure. Moxi's activities at each hospital vary, as each hospital has different staff workflows and needs, so there's no "typical day." But a few examples of activities that Moxi has done so far include: securely delivering lab samples from patient room to hospital lab and compiling new patient room "admission kits" on a daily basis. This entails going to the supply room to gather the 12 individual items required, then traveling down hallways to drop them off into the designated patient room so it's there when the nurse needs it.

That's great. Can Moxi also read a nurse's mind? [Laughs] Yes, in a way. Moxi has intelligence and learns from patterns of behavior. This gives Moxi "predictive abilities" to lessen nurses' cognitive load in addition to their physical load. For example, Moxi can coordinate with the hospital's central supply unit, integrated with patient's EHR (electronic health record) and will "know" when a patient is scheduled for a catheter change. At the designated day, Moxi gets the set of supplies for a catheter change from the supply room and delivers it to the box outside the patient's room.

When I interviewed Maria Bualat, Deputy Head of the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames, she said situational awareness was key so robots didn't irritate astronauts onboard the ISS. We have the same issue with Moxi in hospital hallways. Moxi uses a wide variety of sensors to watch out for unexpected ambulatory situations. For example, if there is a patient on a gurney being quickly wheeled along, Moxi moves to the right, and out of the way.

Clever. Finally, tell us why you decided on Austin, Texas, and not Silicon Valley or Boston, where most of the other robots are? Austin is a great place to build a company. There's amazing access to strong tech talent, and community, with a focus on entrepreneurship. Having said that, I was born and raised in the Bay Area so, at some point in the future, we might open an office there too.